Outer Space Mining: Exploring Techno-Utopianism in a Time of Climate Crisis

Deberdt, Raphael; Billon, Philippe Le

doi:10.1080/24694452.2023.2201339

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…If SpaceX remains a very terrestrial affair, with massive emissions of its own 6 (Piesing 2022), much of the enterprise of spatial colonisation rests on outer‐space mining that will provide the minerals and water required for travel and settlement. Outer‐space mining not only opens up a new “resource” frontier for financial speculation and material extraction, but also a colonised future for capitalism (Deberdt and Le Billon 2023b). Jeff Bezos’ trillion of space colonists (Powell 2019) constitute a colonial force and a potential consumerist population.…”

Section: The Creation Of Future Inequalities: Green Growth and Wealth...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Green Transition's Necropolitics: Inequalities, Climate Extractivism, and Carbon Classes

Deberdt,

Le Billon

2024

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This article theorises the processes of colonisation, wealth accumulation, and inequalities creation that the current paradigm of a resource‐hungry green transition enacts on the most vulnerable populations. We suggest that the extractivist logics and related technical fixes are leading to a “climate necropolitics”. In this, the socio‐economic system is increasingly defined by classes’ carbon exposure and consumption. Through the “green growth” of late capitalism, we theorise the advent of four carbon‐defined classes. Bounded by the access to climate tech capital and consumption of low‐carbon products, these include the ultra‐carbonised, decarbonised, still‐carbonised, and uncarbonised classes—with the first two acting as dominant classes and necropolitical agents sustained by the remaining lower classes. Inspired by Marxist scholars, we suggest that the current status quo is untenable and will result in class warfare during which coalitions between classes could reorient the “make live and let die” of the current green transition paradigm.

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Section: The Creation Of Future Inequalities: Green Growth and Wealth...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Green Transition's Necropolitics: Inequalities, Climate Extractivism, and Carbon Classes

Deberdt,

Le Billon

2024

Antipode

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“…Meanwhile, deep seabed mining has been argued as an alternative to land-based extraction but is also controversial due to potential environmental risks and the lack of regulatory frameworks in international waters (Kim, 2017;Levin et al, 2020). Subsequently, space mining has been argued as a solution given the commercially lucrative metals in asteroids such as cobalt, nickel, platinum, iron, nickel, rare earth elements, and precious metals (Deberdt and Le Billon, 2023). In recent years, spacefaring nations and private companies began exploring the possibility of extracting resources from the Moon and asteroids with the hope to transport them back to Earth (Moore et al, 2022;Yarlagadda, 2022).…”

Section: Conceptualizing Commons In Spacementioning

confidence: 99%